Grofers to lay off 10 pc staff, revokes job offers

Grofers India Pvt. Ltd, the grocery delivery start-up funded by Softbank Corp. and Tiger Global Management, will lay off 10 per cent of its workforce, even as it revoked job offers to fresh graduates, citing adverse market conditions.

Grofers revoked 67 job offers to students from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, National Institute of Technologies and the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, who were scheduled to join the start-up in July

On Tuesday, Grofers revoked 67 job offers to students from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, National Institute of Technologies and the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, who were scheduled to join the start-up in July.

Chief Executive, Grofers, Albinder Dhindsa confirmed the development to Livemint. “We revoked about 67 offers mostly for joinees into operations. We are downsizing some of the teams given the market environment and our revised growth projections. Most of the joinees were supposed to be for these teams. We are still talking to the institutes and the affected individuals to figure out a way forward,” he said in an email response.

Employees affected by the layoffs will be offered severance packages equivalent to double the salary they would draw during their notice period

Grofers’ decision comes after Flipkart’s move to defer joining dates of leading engineering and management institutes by six months. It stated that it was rejigging its team structure which would make it hard to accommodate freshers immediately.

In the face of a funding crunch, several other startups, especially in the Food-Tech space, have gone through a round of layoffs and downsizing operations in the recent past.

Zomato and FoodPanda both went in for a round of layoffs, while SpoonJoy, a company which was acquired by Grofers, shut its services in major cities. TinyOwl, another struggling food ordering company was acquired by B2B delivery startup Roadrunnr (now Runnr).

For e-commerce, 2016 has been a tough year as funding freezes. Other internet companies such as Hopscotch, CarDekho, Roadrunnr and Click Labs have also deferred joining dates.